Sam

“Finished already?” Unger pouted. “You’re really not a very good sport.”

“I thought you couldn’t wait for me to get out of here,” Sam said.

The demon waved away her retort. “That was before I learned you were someone interesting. Now, since you insisted on butchering your build without my input, at least allow me to give you some general advice that will undoubtedly serve you well in the Forlorn Frontier. You—”

“Actually, I’d like to get on with my day, if possible,” Sam cut in, flashing her nastiest grin. “Lots to do—you know how it is.”

Unger’s gray-green face tightened with fury. “Fine,” he said in a curt, clipped tone. “Step right over here, and we will get you on your way.”

Rolling his towering contraption of a chair to the side, he motioned to the far end of the circular floorspace. As Sam rounded the desk, she saw that there was something like a short springboard of polished stone jutting out from a gap in the toothy crenellations.

“You're expecting me to jump?” Sam asked, cautiously approaching the suspended stone slab and eyeing the sea of clouds laid out below it.

It was Unger’s turn to give a nasty smile. “That is the way, yes.”

“There’s not a second door I could go through or anything?”

“Afraid not.”

Sam’s steps grew shorter and more hesitant as she approached the springboard, until she was inching along, shuffling on the marble. She had never been particularly afraid of heights, but when she thought about the thousands of feet that no doubt separated her from the ground, it made her stomach lurch. “And what if I can’t?”

“Oh, I’m sure we will figure something out,” Unger hummed soothingly.

Sam glanced back, finding that the demon had jumped out of his lowered chair and was standing disconcertingly close behind her, as if angling for an opportunity to punt her over the edge.

Rather than face that alternative, Sam quickly scampered out onto the springboard, the hairs on her arms spiking with every step. There was no sign of land through the cottony clouds that now took up her entire field of vision, but she still felt a surge of vertigo knotting her guts, everything seeming to sway even though she stood frozen stiff. The tips of her toes nudged just over the end, gripping for purchase.

The note did tell me to take a leap of faith, I suppose.

Before the rational part of Sam’s brain could begin to convince her of the absurdity of this plan, she plunged a foot over the edge of the tower. The moment she began falling she wished she could take it back, but it was too late now. The wind roared in her ears, ripped at her clothing, dried out her eyes.

She was tumbling, everything spinning, her stomach rebelling. She belly-flopped straight into a cloud bank, and the world became a field of uniform gray, moisture beading on her cheeks and sticking to her clothing.

Her scream was torn away on the howling wind.

* * *

Sam must have passed out at some point, because when she came to she was face down with a mouth full of sand. Spitting and coughing, shivering with wet and cold, she dragged herself onto her hands and knees, requiring several tries to manage it, and immediately found that she was buck naked.

She sat hunched over on a rocky beach beneath an overcast sky, waves smacking her butt every few moments none-too-politely. Cursing under her breath, Sam dragged herself higher onto the beach, out of the reach of the choppy ocean that lay behind her. Overhead, there were disappointed cries from a pack of seagulls that had hoped for a nice fat carcass to pick apart, occasionally drowned by the crashing swell of waves on the jagged black cliffs that jutted out of the earth to her left. Maybe a hundred feet ahead, the beach was broken by a dense treeline that stretched on as far as she could see to her right.

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Frozen so deep she felt she would shatter into little icy shards if someone took a mallet to her, Sam wanted nothing more than to find a safe nook somewhere, out of the wind and the wet, where she could catch her breath. Unfortunately, she wasn’t even sure she could stand up, let alone find herself a suitable resting spot. If she allowed herself to collapse where she was, she was pretty sure she would die of exposure. Even though she knew that, a piece of her hypothermia-addled mind thought it seemed like an excellent idea to simply sprawl out and close her eyes. Just for a few minutes. Just to get some strength back.

Don’t worry, Sam thought, trying and failing to stop her teeth from chattering. This is part of the plan, right? Will has a plan, doesn’t he? And I mean, this is a dream, so what does it matter anyway?

Except… If it’s all a dream, why am I so afraid to fall asleep?

Because when you fall asleep in a dream, you wake up.

I don’t want to wake up yet. Not before I see him.

I just want to see him.

Finding a surge of strength somewhere deep inside, Sam tipped herself back onto her haunches, hissing breaths through gritted teeth, then got a foot beneath her. She stood on wobbly legs, took a step, and fell as her knees buckled. She spent the next minute recreating her first miraculous success, tried a few tottering steps, and when her legs held she began a laborious trudge along the beach.

Nestled beneath the shoulder of the nearby cliffs, she noticed a manmade structure—a tall wooden watchtower that overlooked the beach—and some little black dots moving beneath it. Were those people? They were moving away from her, going toward a gap between two sharp dagger-points of rock that presumably led to a path along the left side of the coast, separated from Sam’s view by the cliffs. If they went much further, they would not be able to see her anymore.

“Hey!” Sam cried, nearly falling when she raised her arms over her head to wave them down, teetering until she caught her balance again. She coughed at the bits of sand that had somehow made their way down her throat, and spat out a grainy gob of saliva. “Hey! Over here!”

Sam was worried that they would not hear her with the sound of the ocean, but they seemed to be turning around, and she let herself fall back on her butt with relief when she saw the little dots growing steadily larger, becoming recognizable as definitely human.

Sam held herself tight, shivering, and waited for them to reach her. They were four men, dressed in padded coats, each with a cudgel on one hip and a round buckler on the other.

“I’m r-r-really glad to see you,” Sam worked out through numb, uncooperative lips. “Could you… Could you g-get me someplace warm? Clothes? Anything?”

“She’s a Laborer, Tinny,” one of the men whispered to another, sounding pleased. “We’ll be getting paid big for this one.”

Sam’s relief quickly evaporated as she glanced between four hardened faces, and finally noticed the heavy shackles that the man at the back was working on untangling.

“If you want clothes and chow, stand up and come with us,” a flat-nosed man—Tinny, his friend had called him—said. “You make it easy for us, you get to walk on your own. You decide to be difficult, you get the chains. You make trouble after that, well…” He patted the weapon at his belt. “We got ways of teaching a girl some manners.”

“Oh,” Sam sighed, the last of her hope escaping with a flaccid outrushing of air. “You… You guys aren’t here to help, are you?”

Tinny’s friend shrugged. “Sorry, darling. Life sucks—you can whine about it on your own time.”

He bent down to grab Sam by the shoulder. Instinctively, she caught his forearm in an effort to divert him, fingers clamping down with strength fueled by desperation.

Sam blinked as she both heard and felt several sharp pops. Tinny’s friend cried out in agony and recoiled as though from a venomous snake, his awkwardly bent right arm clutched protectively with his left. “Fuck!” he shrieked, backing off behind the other men. “She just broke my arm!”

Tinny frowned at his friend, then back at Sam. “Crazy bitch must’ve put all her points in Strength,” he muttered. “Right—Dalton, Spuds, take care of her.” He motioned to each of the remaining two other men in turn.

A lumpy-faced man—Spuds—stepped forward with a sigh. Holding up a hand, he said: “Peace.”

For some reason, that word held power, reverberated unnaturally in the air between them.

When Dalton moved in to clamp manacles down on Sam’s wrists and a collar around her neck, she found that she was unable to lift a hand to resist. Whenever she tried to punch or kick or shove, the idea seemed to slide away like rain off a tarp.

By the time this strange lapse wore off a few seconds later, she had been dragged to her feet by her chains, and was forced to stagger along behind as the men trudged off toward their watchtower.

Will… Sam thought numbly. Where are you? This can’t be part of the plan, can it?